Pretty much 100% convinced that the leftist utopias in the mainstream are as dumb as the ones on the right, and I say that while leaning mostly left.
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If your standard is Scandinavia, are you talking about domestically benevolent(ish) petrostates or about buying up industry in unregulated countries?
You are not going to get this standard of living anywhere else without extracting wealth and resources. Not by that path.
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Social democracy and democratic socialism both hinge on "growth as usual, just give more money to regular people".
Yes, it's not *as* bad as neoliberalism, and will improve living standards, but it will not lead to global prosperity, or do much to prevent death-by-growth.
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The idea of fighting to replace the stupid, abusive elites with marginally less stupid, a lot less abusive elites is good, but hardly sufficient.
We are solving very local problems, here. And not in a way that scales.
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I'll always sympathize more with feeding the poor than with disgusting oligarchs, but you gotta actually outdo them at the drawing board, don't you?
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The cavalcade of people attacking e.g. Elon Musk for his flawed utopias and Hughesesque antics can't come up with a single idea that isn't Old Modernist BS.
The same people make fun of his (lack of) philosophical or political grounding. But then why are their ideas even worse?
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Oh well. I probably shouldn't waste my time shouting in the wilderness about this.
Gonna go have myself a good think about this.
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I think the goal of marginal - or, better, substantial and long-term - improvements in the daily lives of ordinary people has the potential to free up a huge number of wasted hours of people's lives and give the breathing room to make much bigger changes.
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Yes. But the "many, not the few" slogan is pretty pitiable when you understand how many of the profits of how many people's economic activity are needed.
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You want a Norway-esque UK, yes? It will work up to a point, but requires a substantial resource drain on everywhere else.
The equilibrium state is neocolonialism.
Not saying Brits shouldn't vote Labour. Saying we need to do better than social democracy as a planet. Layers, etc
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For sure, it's a drop in the ocean compared to what's really required - but whenever anything close to the necessary changes start to be made, those at the bottom get hit first and hardest. A fairer system across the board should even out the inevitable pain that is to come.
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Oh by all means. Let all nations form states, then nationalize, if for no other reason than to crash a broken system so it can be replaced.
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